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The First Trilogy #1-3
Triptych: Herself Surprised / To Be a Pilgrim / The Horse's Mouth
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
- GenresClassics
768 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
3 people are currently reading
78 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Cary
100 books98 followersCary now undertook his great works examining historical and social change in England during his own lifetime. The First Trilogy (1941–44) finally provided Cary with a reasonable income, and The Horse's Mouth (1944) remains his most popular novel. Cary's pamphlet "The Case for African Freedom" (1941), published by Orwell's Searchlight Books series, had attracted some interest, and the film director Thorold Dickinson asked for Cary's help in developing a wartime movie set partly in Africa. In 1943, while writing The Horse's Mouth, Cary travelled to Africa with a film crew to work on Men of Two Worlds.
Cary travelled to India in 1946 on a second film project with Dickinson, but the struggle against the British for national independence made movie-making impossible, and the project was abandoned. The Moonlight (1946), a novel about the difficulties of women, ended a long period of intense creativity for Cary. Gertrude was suffering from cancer and his output slowed for a while.
Gertrude died as A Fearful Joy (1949) was being published. Cary was now at the height of his fame and fortune. He began preparing a series of prefatory notes for the re-publication of all his works in a standard edition published by Michael Joseph.
He visited the United States, collaborated on a stage adaptation of Mister Johnson, and was offered a CBE, which he refused. Meanwhile he continued work on the three novels that make up the Second Trilogy (1952–55). In 1952, Cary had some muscle problems which were originally diagnosed as bursitis, but as more symptoms were noted over the next two years, the diagnosis was changed to that of motor neuron disease, a wasting and gradual paralysis that was terminal.
As his physical powers failed, Cary had to have a pen tied to his hand and his arm supported by a rope in order to write. Finally, he resorted to dictation until unable to speak, and then ceased writing for the first time since 1912. His last work, The Captive and the Free (1959), first volume of a projected trilogy on religion, was unfinished at his death on March 29, 1957.
Cary travelled to India in 1946 on a second film project with Dickinson, but the struggle against the British for national independence made movie-making impossible, and the project was abandoned. The Moonlight (1946), a novel about the difficulties of women, ended a long period of intense creativity for Cary. Gertrude was suffering from cancer and his output slowed for a while.
Gertrude died as A Fearful Joy (1949) was being published. Cary was now at the height of his fame and fortune. He began preparing a series of prefatory notes for the re-publication of all his works in a standard edition published by Michael Joseph.
He visited the United States, collaborated on a stage adaptation of Mister Johnson, and was offered a CBE, which he refused. Meanwhile he continued work on the three novels that make up the Second Trilogy (1952–55). In 1952, Cary had some muscle problems which were originally diagnosed as bursitis, but as more symptoms were noted over the next two years, the diagnosis was changed to that of motor neuron disease, a wasting and gradual paralysis that was terminal.
As his physical powers failed, Cary had to have a pen tied to his hand and his arm supported by a rope in order to write. Finally, he resorted to dictation until unable to speak, and then ceased writing for the first time since 1912. His last work, The Captive and the Free (1959), first volume of a projected trilogy on religion, was unfinished at his death on March 29, 1957.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 17, 2020
This triology stands for whatever is best in Joyce Carey.
In ‘Herself Surprised’, Sara Monday recounts with zest her love-escapades with Tom Wilcher and Gulley Jimson. While Wilcher is an unsuccessful attorney, Jimson is an insolvent but exceedingly endowed artist.
Sara is formerly married, yet tenders herself entirely to her aficionados. Her personality has attributes of a twofold-individuality. On one hand she is spiritual and dutiful and on the other she commits lechery. In the words of the novelist, she "could commit adultery at one end and weep for her sins at the other, and enjoyed both operation at once."
In ‘To be a Pilgrim’, Wilcher explicates his ineptitude. Almost like Sheakespeare’s Hamlet he chats about his ailment and in doing so, presents a bird’s eye view of the entire political history of England. He covers it from the commencement of the twentieth century up until the Second Great War. The reader realises that Tom is a letdown in life owing to his heretical and almost anarchic political principle.
The chronicle of Gulley Jimson, the concluding and most excellent part of the triology is ‘The Horse's Mouth’.
Jimson is the ideal diagram of social disapprobation and bohemianism. He is overwhelmed by his obsession for art. Consequently, he relinquishes a steady job and heaps untold wreck his family. An ardent admirer of William Blake, Jimson steadfastly holds the ostensibly constructed reality inside his mind’s eye as his sole genuine existence. Continuing to subsist exclusively for the sake of art reduces him to rubbles both in religion and ethics. He contravenes every conformist value and lives the life of a raffish, indolent recluse.
Things come to a prying crossroad, when Jimson is incarcerated for intimidating a millionaire who has swindled him. Improsinment, nonetheless, barely holds any horror for Jimson, whose ardour for art is so uncontainable that scarcely minds pilfering to supply himself with materials for painting. Though poor, Jimson is an artist of brilliance. Few of his works bedeck the walls of the National Gallery.
The novel reaches its finale when Jimson devotes all his well-merited capital in painting a gigantic mural called the 'Creation'. He seeks to put it up on the wall of a precarious and unstable garage which, he has been warned, is going to be scrapped down. Seeking to bequest the mural to England, he flouts the municipal order and moves ahead with the work. He is blasé and laid back even while the knocking down operations has begun. The wall, mural and all, come crashing down and with it the scaffolding on which he was standing. As Jimson is carried off to the hospital, the readers find him yet talking merrily. At the close of the novel, standing on the graveyard of wrecked dreams, Jimson is sixty-eight. The year is 1939, and World War II has begun.
The high-spirited exuberance that characterizes the whole trio makes it a conquest of entertaining characterisation, almost bordering on Dickens. The blustery, sparkling and blithe spirit of Gulley Jimson shines through the whole memoir.
A thumping five on five. This book leaves you an altered individual. Or maybe, it’s just me. Or it might even be that I have always found a lot of Gulley Jimson in myself.
In ‘Herself Surprised’, Sara Monday recounts with zest her love-escapades with Tom Wilcher and Gulley Jimson. While Wilcher is an unsuccessful attorney, Jimson is an insolvent but exceedingly endowed artist.
Sara is formerly married, yet tenders herself entirely to her aficionados. Her personality has attributes of a twofold-individuality. On one hand she is spiritual and dutiful and on the other she commits lechery. In the words of the novelist, she "could commit adultery at one end and weep for her sins at the other, and enjoyed both operation at once."
In ‘To be a Pilgrim’, Wilcher explicates his ineptitude. Almost like Sheakespeare’s Hamlet he chats about his ailment and in doing so, presents a bird’s eye view of the entire political history of England. He covers it from the commencement of the twentieth century up until the Second Great War. The reader realises that Tom is a letdown in life owing to his heretical and almost anarchic political principle.
The chronicle of Gulley Jimson, the concluding and most excellent part of the triology is ‘The Horse's Mouth’.
Jimson is the ideal diagram of social disapprobation and bohemianism. He is overwhelmed by his obsession for art. Consequently, he relinquishes a steady job and heaps untold wreck his family. An ardent admirer of William Blake, Jimson steadfastly holds the ostensibly constructed reality inside his mind’s eye as his sole genuine existence. Continuing to subsist exclusively for the sake of art reduces him to rubbles both in religion and ethics. He contravenes every conformist value and lives the life of a raffish, indolent recluse.
Things come to a prying crossroad, when Jimson is incarcerated for intimidating a millionaire who has swindled him. Improsinment, nonetheless, barely holds any horror for Jimson, whose ardour for art is so uncontainable that scarcely minds pilfering to supply himself with materials for painting. Though poor, Jimson is an artist of brilliance. Few of his works bedeck the walls of the National Gallery.
The novel reaches its finale when Jimson devotes all his well-merited capital in painting a gigantic mural called the 'Creation'. He seeks to put it up on the wall of a precarious and unstable garage which, he has been warned, is going to be scrapped down. Seeking to bequest the mural to England, he flouts the municipal order and moves ahead with the work. He is blasé and laid back even while the knocking down operations has begun. The wall, mural and all, come crashing down and with it the scaffolding on which he was standing. As Jimson is carried off to the hospital, the readers find him yet talking merrily. At the close of the novel, standing on the graveyard of wrecked dreams, Jimson is sixty-eight. The year is 1939, and World War II has begun.
The high-spirited exuberance that characterizes the whole trio makes it a conquest of entertaining characterisation, almost bordering on Dickens. The blustery, sparkling and blithe spirit of Gulley Jimson shines through the whole memoir.
A thumping five on five. This book leaves you an altered individual. Or maybe, it’s just me. Or it might even be that I have always found a lot of Gulley Jimson in myself.
wishlist-f
March 25, 2023Time for a reread.
Triptych: Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth
1.Herself Surprised
2.To Be a Pilgrim 4 stars
3.The Horse's Mouth 4 stars
*Mister Johnson 4 stars
Triptych: Herself Surprised, To Be a Pilgrim and The Horse's Mouth
1.Herself Surprised
2.To Be a Pilgrim 4 stars
3.The Horse's Mouth 4 stars
*Mister Johnson 4 stars
December 16, 2020
These works are mostly out of print today, and they do have a very 1930s England feel about them. But they are classic and profound in their own way. The Horse's Mouth is the most famous - Herself Surprised and To Be a Pilgrim deal with overlapping characters, but are a bit less memorable and more rambling.
The Horse's Mouth leaves the most powerful impression - a moving and funny story of a mischievous and struggling old artist and the scrapes he ends up in. Makes you question the relationship between society at large and the artists - people truly caught up in works of imagination, ideas and feelings.
The Horse's Mouth leaves the most powerful impression - a moving and funny story of a mischievous and struggling old artist and the scrapes he ends up in. Makes you question the relationship between society at large and the artists - people truly caught up in works of imagination, ideas and feelings.
November 19, 2021
I have finished Herself Surprised and was quite taken in by the story. I look forward to seeing where the author goes with the other two related novels.
Sara, the main character and narrator, travels from rags to riches and back to rags and then almost back to riches again. She has a good deal of strength and character but men seem to abuse her. What agency does she have in her life or at the time she was living?
Sara, the main character and narrator, travels from rags to riches and back to rags and then almost back to riches again. She has a good deal of strength and character but men seem to abuse her. What agency does she have in her life or at the time she was living?
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March 20, 2016The Horse's Mouth is one of the ABA Journal's "30 Lawyers Pick 30 Books Every Lawyer Should Read"
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews